Gold Nano: The People’s Car Meets Super-Bling

Goldplus has covered a Tata Nano with gold, silver, rubies, pearls, emeralds and more. Click on picture to view slideshow.

The Tata Nano was an innovation designed to bring affordable cars to the Indian masses across rural and small-town India. Titan Industries-owned Goldplus has made an unaffordable car designed to appeal to the masses with its conspicuous use of gold and jewelry.

If you were looking for a good image for unabashed bling, the car — unveiled in a publicity stunt at the Tata Theater in Mumbai this evening by Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata — might fit the bill. It even made this Punjabi shudder. Goldplus, which runs a chain of jewelry stores, slathered a Nano with 80 kilograms of gold (22 karat, of course), 15 kilograms of silver, and precious and semi precious stones including rubies, pearls, emeralds, and the black beads worn by Hindu brides in a necklace.

In other words, everything unaffordable. Gold today stood at 28,147 rupees per 10 grams. Do you want to even do the math on how much that adds up to when you use 80 kg? Perhaps a rather ironic use of the “people’s car,” we think. (If you must know, it’s 225.17 million rupees.)

Megha Bahree/The Wall Street journal

When it comes to over-the-top marketing efforts, this is not a first for Goldplus. A few years ago, it made the world’s largest bangle. That was a little over 6 feet in diameter and used up 25 kg of gold. It was displayed in Goldplus stores and brought in 300,000 customers to gawk, according to the company.

The jewelry car will be on the road (not literally) for the next six months as the company displays it in the towns where it operates. A few lucky (or shameless) customers will get to sit in it for photo ops.

Look up close and there’s no denying the workmanship and beauty of the individual pieces. But take it altogether and you really need dark sunglasses.

The bangle was melted. What about the car? C.V. Venkataraman, the chief operating officer of the jewelry division of Titan Industries, hopes someone will buy it.

“500 years from now that would be quite a family heirloom, wouldn’t it?” Well, quite.

In its latest publicity stunt, jewelry store operator Goldplus has covered a Tata Nano car with gold and silver, studded with precious and semi-precious jewels. Some snapshots.

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The Tata Nano designed by Goldplus was covered with 80 kilograms of gold, 15 kilograms of silver and precious and semi-precious stones including rubies, pearls, emeralds and black pearls. Left, the car is unveiled in Mumbai, Monday.
Megha Bahree/The Wall Street Journal…

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